Santa stopped by last night. We are usually his first stop on Christmas Eve. I have to limit his intake of the home brew. He and Doug got pretty soused a few years ago and I ended up driving the sleigh. That was scary. The reindeer like to play tricks on greenhorns. But that's a whole other story. If you were acquainted then you received the email about the adventure.

Anyway, the reindeer have gone on strike this year. They want health coverage, vacation pay and sick leave. They want a cost of living increase in wages.....even though Obama has said that there has been no increase in the cost of living.

Santa was trying out some moose in place of the reindeer. Because of the difference in antlers, he had to run single file moose. It didn't work. When they stopped on the average house it became a case of the first 3 moose falling off over the edge of the house or the sled not making it onto the roof and all the packages dumping off onto the ground and a new reloading taking place after each stop.

He was looking for suggestions for reindeer replacements. I suggested trying white-tailed deer. He should be here in two hours. I'll let you know how he makes out. Keep your fingers crossed.

Santa came back. It took him quite a while because he had to come via the ground trail instead of the flight plan. Apparently white-tailed deer suffer from aerophobia....a fear of flying.

Now I have had to hide all except one bottle of my blueberry wine because the pudgy fellow will be spending the night. Wind chills have us down to -50 degrees and more. He cried so about that we finally told him he could stay over and we'd get him set up tomorrow with a new crew to try out.

We are trying 8 St. Bernards. They don't mind the cold and they climb the Swiss Alps frequently without any problems, so heights don't seem to bother them.

Now it is time to feed the two guys before they polish off that bottle of wine and don't want anything to eat and start tearing the house apart looking for my liquor hiding places. After supper I have to log in to the North Pole Gift Request Line and help Santa with responses to both naughty and nice boys and girls. As far as I am concerned most of the little brats are so spoiled all year long that they don't need elves busting their backsides for the ingrates. They always write to ask for something but seldom write to say thank you when they get it!

Anyway, here I am with two guys slurping the wine and ready to be fed. Then it's the letters and list routine for me. After that I have to make sure the St. Bernards are going to be here by dawn.

Just no rest for the wicked, is there? Let's hope the dogs work out better than my last idea. We are getting close to the big night.

LMAO Hope they didn't tear your house apart too bad. If so, they need to put it back together before they leave. LOLOL I wonder if the St. Bernards are going to work. Don't know if they will be able to run very fast though.. Presents may be late????

St. Bernards slobber. When they are flying the slobber flies right back into Santa's face. He vetoed the St. Bernards.

Now he's upstairs snoring so loudly that my own dogs can't sleep. We must get this resolved. He said he tried caribou once and they kept goosing the caribou in front of them each time they had to leap higher. Eventually he apparently ended up with two caribous trying to do the work of eight and they crashed.

Rabbits are too small to haul all that weight. The fox are too sly....they would mix up the presents and land on the wrong house. The coyotes just refuse to get along. The bear are hibernating.

I have to think of something. I have to think of it soon. I am getting worn out from training at midnight and waiting to see how things pan out the next day and only having to search for some other fly-by-night to train while Santa and Doug imbibe.

Please help me. I'm down to five days to put this act together. I'm so tired I can't think of any plans right now. Please! Help Me!

I found myself in a position of having to go negotiate with the flying buzzards at the North Pole. Not fun! It's cold out there and the further north I went the colder it got.

I made it. All the way to the jolly man's little village and back. I used the Reid/Pelosi approach with the reindeer when they initially even refused to meet with me.

I went in with scales, freezer bags and a meat grinder. They looked at me like I was a little crazy and wanted to know what I had in mind with that equipment. I told them without Santa's magic dust they were just reindeer like any other reindeer. I told them that I had found a dozen qualified replacements for them but we had to free up stall space to bring them in. I very carefully explained to them that they had been getting fat off treats on Christmas Eve for ages and ages and now it seemed it was time they spread the wealth. I told them that turning them out to pasture after their cushiony lives would not be fair to them so I was trying to calculate just how much freezer space we would need to pack their worn out carcasses, once dressed, sliced and ground.

Nine reindeer jumped into their own harnesses and latched on to my snowmobile and flew me home. They then hooked up to Santa's sleigh and flew back to the North Pole to pick up the gifts and get ready to deliver them all around the world.

Now, ho hum, there is one job left for me. The reindeer are back and I've got Santa awake now and he is almost sober enough to fly and carry out his duties. (Good thing the reindeer know their way from here to there and back here after all these years!) I figure one more cup of coffee here and a big thermos for the flight will take care of things. I knew I couldn't trust Doug and Santa alone for all the time I was gone!